Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Facing Pandora's Box Of Nuclear Myths And Prejudices. SpaceDaily.com by Wayne Smith for NuclearSpace.com Brisbane - Feb 12, 2003 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Yay! I'm famous again, or rather was for a day or so. Didn't even realise they had published that one already. It's rather lengthy but some of you might find the topic an enlightening one. It's been called daring by some. I go straight for the throat of our ingrained nuclearphobia's. As an awther I ofcourse subsist on coffee and reader feedback. Please give me your brutally honest criticism regarding this piece. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I have to be honest - I wasn't terribly impressed by your piece, but I do accept that, if we are to meet Kyoto agreements on emissions, then there is no alternative to nuclear. And, yes, modern concepts for reactors are as near as possible to failsafe - but then so was CanDU. Why did it not catch on? Perhaps more expensive than Magnox/AGR/PWR/etc? Holland - not noted for being unconcerned with the environment - is about to restart a reactor. Other countries will be cashing the reality cheque soon. If you want to stop an argument anytime, ask your opponent how much extra they are prepared to pay for their electricity in order to avoid nuclear generation. Cheers, Ron.
A friend has written a far longer and more technical article over at http://www.nuclearspace.com which gives much better arguments and explanations. It's still in draft form at the messageboard forum 'NuclearSpace Media'. Mine was kept light so as not to scare people away. Although I had help from engineers and physicists I'm only a dumb writer. Professionals tend to give too much detail in their 'pieces' although some I've met do have a talent for explaining difficult to grasp sciences in an entertaining manner. Thanks for the honest criticism. Probably time I quit my amateur writing career anyway. It was only ever a time consuming hobby and the pay sucks. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
hey! hey, thank god I found someone informed about nuclear energy. I have a rather simple question, have you ever heard of any nuclear reactor that worked without a body of water to use as a heat sink? Power plants have their cooling tower, and ships obviously have the water around them, but what about a nuclear reactor that vented the extra heat into the air? Obviously this would limit the amount of energy you could produce, but I'm thinking about small scale nuclear reactors anyhow. Air would be sucked in at the level of the reactor, and then shot though the heat exchange up towards the sky. Have you heard about any experimentation, and assuming you could have maybe 10 tons for the powerplant, and heat exchange, how much energy could one roughly produce?
The Windscale reactor in England was one. It was used for producing plutonium, not power though. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/nucacc.html No idea on how big it was, but I'd guess the drawback to big and air-cooled is the obvious one...overheating is easy to do.
For an indepth answer on that one try: http://www.nuclearspace.com Their messageboard should help. http://pub97.ezboard.com/bnuclearspace The only other one I can think of is: http://www.atomicengines.com A member of NuclearSpace.com who runs his own nuclear engineering company. Contactable at atomicrod@aol.com but he isn't fast at replying.
